


Voiceless

by Mangacat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Crucifixion, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:56:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangacat/pseuds/Mangacat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor had never realized before how expressive Loki’s eyes are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voiceless

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I neither own them because there are so many people who have a piece of that cake. I’m just playing in Marvel’s sandbox completely profitless.
> 
>  **A/N:** Somehow I got it in my head that I wanted to read Avengers-fic one weekend, and then I got it into my head that I wanted to write one instead. This took way longer than it should have and this story got way less work than it totally deserved, but deadlines make good writing arguments which is why I finish this at 1am on a workday. So this is for my [](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/)**hc_bingo** square: crucifixion, following the cattish tradition of breaking into new fandoms with bingo cards and actually completing my bingo like three minutes from the deadline. Enjoy, hopefully, and let me know what you thought. Also, please forgive my beta, she hasn't received a lick of what I posted the past couple of weeks.

“For the grievous harm you have wrought on worlds under our protection and our own, I sentence you, Loki Laufeyson of Asgard, to be bound and punished on the cross of Valknut at sunrise tomorrow until such time Yggdrasil sees your penance served and balance is restored.”

Thor had never realized before how expressive Loki’s eyes are.  
They call him Silvertongue, The Liesmith, the trickster whose elegant words can twist a maiden into yielding her virtue as fast as rousing an army into clamouring for the blood of their allies. His voice inspires the birds to fall silent during the rare occasion he finds himself in the mood to recite one of the old ballads. The sound of a whisper is Loki’s greatest weapon.  
So naturally, his ability to speak is the first thing Director Fury decided to take away in the aftermath of the Battle of New York as it has come to be remembered in the minds of mortal men. And Thor, negotiating Loki’s return to Asgard as the only place that has any hope of containing him and handing out justice at the same time, found himself contemplating the myriad of things his brother seems to be able to tell him with a simple tug of a brow, a sweep of lashes. Now on his knees in front of the ruler of Asgard and his court, the muzzle gagging Loki is still ugly and humiliating and it pains Thor that Loki’s actions have made such measures inevitable, but he also revels in his brother’s involuntary honesty, in the fact that his silence has not yet been groomed or polished to be an insurmountable net of tangled intentions.

It doesn’t soothe, however, the sharp ache that spreads in his chest at the genuine horror flooding Loki’s widened eyes as a reaction to Odin’s ruling. Thor’s hands curl instinctively tighter around Mjölnir’s handle, the familiar creak of the leather a small, but welcome distraction. He only has a vague inkling as to what the sentence entails, but Loki, who has gone deathly still and is now looking at Thor, silently imploring, must know exactly what fate awaits him. Still, there is no doubt that Loki has to pay for his transgressions and that a light sentence was never in question. Thor trusts Odin to have the measure of it, has to believe that the Allfather in his age old wisdom has devised a way to be just and fair. So he does not move; does not speak through the hush that falls over the Great Hall, watches the realization dawn on Loki through the tensing muscles around his eyes, creating fault lines of pain and resignation. When his brother finally bows his head and accepts his fate, Thor feels the shadows of the Great Hall lengthen and deepen, a chill creeping into his soul like he has failed his brother once more. For the span of half a breath, he wavers in his decision to stand down, but the moment passes and with it his qualms.

The feast of his homecoming should inspire ravenous satiation, but the rich food tastes like ash in his mouth and he does not find the drink to quell his thirst at the high table. Not when all of Thor’s thoughts are bundled up in the silent figure of his brother that he left insensate and trembling, slouched against the wall of one of the holding cells deep down in the keep. He excuses himself to bed at an indecently early hour, but instead of retreating to his chambers, he creeps down to where a sheet of magically reinforced crystal isolates Loki from the rest of the world. He crouches down right in front of the barrier to catch Loki’s eyes in his sunken state. At first, the other man refuses to acknowledge him, but when Thor doesn’t give up, Loki evidently gets tired of being stared down and clambers over to fall onto his knees in front of Thor. His hand lands inches from Thor’s face and Thor puts his own against it, fingers splayed as if they could touch and lace them if not for the half inch of crystal between them that is woven with magic so strong it could hold the Destroyer. Loki looks at their hands, his own elegant fingers dwarfed by Thor’s paw and an expression of unadulterated loathing flits over his face. He suddenly balls his fists and pounds them against his prison walls with an inaudible howl of wrath, leaving bloody streaks on the barrier. Thor tries to reason with him – having Loki hurt himself was not the intention of his visit – but his words fall on deaf ears and he watches helplessly as his brother spends his rage. There is nothing he can do to avert what is coming except be a traitor and set Loki free. But there’s a fate of a world that was almost thrown out of balance by his brother’s spiteful games, and there are human lives he did not care to protect that demand justice. So Thor sits and waits, feeling stripped of all his might, like he only experienced once, stranded on Midgard with nothing to his name but ancient legend. It’s worse now though, because he does have his weapon, his power, and there is no quest to reclaim the glory of his name or his place among the gods.

For the first time, he feels like he understands Loki’s plight, the most powerful of them all, yet trapped in a web of lies that he spun around himself after others spun them for him. Always in the shadow, yet born with the right to rule, misplaced, shunned, loved beyond measure, loyal and loving in return. Loki is two sides of everything and they’re eternally at war. Thor hopes and pleads in silence that serving penance for what he has done will inspire his brother to turn away from his path of wrath and accept the love and embrace of his family again. It’s a slim hope and from his brother’s reaction, he knows that the ordeal will not be easy to bear. But he has to believe that there is a chance at all. With all these thoughts and contemplations running through his head and his brother’s icy stare piercing unwaveringly through the barrier between them, Thor gives in to exhaustion and sinks down along the wall, the calling of a lavish, warm bed be damned.

Thor wakes to his internal clock striking dawn, slumped on the stairs in front of Loki’s prison and the night’s uneasy sleep comes to waking with a deep, dark ache in his bones. Scrubbing his hand over his face, he tries to chase the vestiges of his hard won rest away only to be fully awake within a second when he notices the crystal wall has vanished and leaves an open, empty cell. His first thought is that Loki has escaped somehow, but it’s almost the time set for his sentence to be carried out and if he was gone before, someone would surely have come looking by now and roused him with the alarm. That left one possibility: the guards had come to take Loki while he slept and they had left him where he was without rousing him, deliberately.

Realization draws Thor’s stomach into tight knots. The only reason to let him sleep on none the wiser about the approaching dawn was to keep him from witnessing Loki’s punishment. Only one could have given that specific order and it means his father anticipated Thor interfering – because he might feel the punishment is somehow unjust. Thor knows from a thousand early days in the training pits that first light is so close, he can taste it in the change of the air. He doesn’t waste another second before running down the corridor towards the deep guts of the palace, the entrance to the great depths of the earth, where the roots of Yggdrasil push up into their world.

Thor arrives at the carved wooden doors that lead to the inner sanctum out of breath and full of dread just in time. He bursts through the entrance with all his raw strength and into the vice-like grip of the waiting guards. Thor just gets far enough into the chamber to see the mighty roots spread out in the center and his father and brother dwarfed by their sheer majestic grace. Loki, no longer muzzled but suspended and immobilized by the tip of Gungnir set squarely onto his chest, arms flung apart as far as they would go, bare toes barely scraping the floor. And Odin, clearly concentrating on keeping his son where he is, half turning towards the other with weary resignation in his eyes, as if both his princes have disappointed but not surprised him, as it were.

Thor struggles to break free, but five or six guards are holding him back with equal ferociousness. He manages to drag them forward a few steps, enough so he can catch his brother’s eyes right before a pulse flares through the gnarled roots, big and small, and a few slim ones rise behind Loki, glowing with raw seiðr. They waver in the air for a moment, as if waiting, until Odin speaks a word of power under his breath and then the tips rush towards Loki’s wrists and feet, plunging in, breaking skin, sinew, bone with a resounding crack, blood immediately running down his arms to drip to the floor. Thor, as everybody else, is frozen into stillness from the terrifying sight and the sound of the haunting scream ripping through the air from Loki’s mouth, the agony in his brother’s voice cutting him to the core. When Odin finally takes a step back, releasing Loki from Gungnir’s power, he stays where he is, suspended in the cross shaped by his body and the wooden shackles of the world tree. Harsh, pained breathes heave from Loki’s chest and he lets his head fall forward, black strands of hair hiding his face from view.

This is the moment that Thor manages to shake the deadly stillness in the room a second before his minders do and he uses their almost relaxed grip to throw them off and run towards his brother as fast as he can. He passes his father like an afterthought and just manages to slow down enough not to crash headlong into Loki. He meets his brother’s wide eyes for a second before reaching out. Loki’s surprised, breathy ‘No’ registers just a second too late before Thor’s hands connect with bare skin, supporting him under his arms, to take the strain of the bleeding wrists for the lack of a better idea. Something like a small current runs up his arms at the touch, leaving all the little hairs standing up in its wake and all of the sudden, Thor feels the energy charging the air around them like he only knows it from the height of the strongest storms. He vaguely hears Odin’s voice calling out for the others to stay back, but he has only eyes for his brother.  
“Thor, you fool, let go.”  
“I can’t, I won’t … you… don’t do this alone.”  
Loki breaks their eye contact and lowers his head to Thor’s shoulder; small tremor’s wracking his body.  
“Stay then, until it’s done.”

Thor doesn’t dare move, and Loki feels cold, so cold, ridges slowly rising from his pale, translucent skin, the marks of his people. Then he notices the skin around the wounds changing, a glow spreading slowly, like there is fire burning in Loki’s veins. It travels up the arms and Thor watches with horrific fascination while his brother’s blood drips on his shoulder where Loki has bitten his lip to keep from letting out another sound that illustrates his agony. Loki lifts his head again to lock eyes with Thor, a whole storm of emotions raging in them. Suddenly, it’s like a fist closing tight around his heart when he realizes that it’s the seiðr burning, all the power scorched from his brother’s body, up his legs and from his wrists and Thor can do nothing but stay and hold him through the ordeal, suffer through the heat that scorches his hands where he refuses to let go of Loki’s skin until the internal fire reaches his head, his heart, every little bit of him until only the eyes are left, bright and green and full of angry tears. Then the last spark goes out and they’re empty, void of his brother’s mind and soul and though the heart beats and the lungs draw breath, Loki is gone.

Thor finally steps back, looking at his hands whose skin is angry red and black from ash in a few places, before he rounds on his father.  
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”  
Odin meets his wrath calmly, though Thor finds the King’s iron will reflected in his gaze.  
“His spirit will wander, search for a better path or purpose until such time the World Tree deems his penance served and he is returned to himself. What you have done was beyond foolish, breaking into an ancient rite like that, be glad you did not kill him outright yourself.”  
Thor is taken aback and his stomach drops at the thought of what consequences his rash actions could have had.  
“But… what do we do?”  
Odin looks at him with part pity, part grief of his own.  
“We wait.”

 


End file.
